As retailers increasingly embrace mobile to boost foot traffic and drive m-commerce, mobile advertising is expanding as well. To capitalize on that trend, mobile ad network Jumptap has partnered with hyperlocal data provider PlaceIQ and appointed a director of retail to oversee ad efforts in the category.

Through the alliance with PlaceIQ, Jumptap says it will allow advertisers to reach the precise areas most likely to contain members of their target audience, whether luxury shoppers, tourists, students or travelers.

PlaceIQ claims its ad-targeting technology creates a “hyperlocal digital index of the physical world,” by understanding not only what is there, but who is in a place, when, and what they’re doing.

While some of this is static data about a location (down to a city block), much of it is gleaned from user actions, like searches people perform or ads they click on in a given spot at a certain time via mobile devices.

The start-up claims its technology is “privacy-friendly,” since it profiles locations rather than people, without gathering or storing personally identifiable information (PII).In December, PlaceIQ landed $4.2 million in first-round venture funding.

Jumptap works with third-party data providers including Acxiom, TargusInfo, Datalogix and Polk to provide information about consumer demographics from purchase history to income level to what cars people own. That anonymized data helped double click-through rates for retail campaigns in the fourth quarter.

In addition to teaming with Place IQ, Jumptap announced its hiring of Matthew Mulderink as its first director of retail to lead strategy for retail publishers and advertisers. Prior to joining Jumptap, Mulderink was director of strategic accounts at ad optimization firm at Dotomi, acquired last August by ValueClick. He was previously in a similar role at Yahoo, working with retailers including Best Buy, Target and Sears.
Read more: MediaPost
SpotXchange First to Provide Auto- Versus User-Initiated Video Advertising Information to Real-Time Bidding Buyers
DENVER – February 21, 2012 – SpotXchange, Inc., the largest global marketplace of video ad inventory, today announced that it is the first real-time-bidding (RTB) supply source to offer its partners initiation type (auto-initiated versus user-initiated) information for video ad inventory in real time with every bid request.  This information will help SpotXchange’s RTB partners valuate inventory more effectively and make more efficient buying decisions.
There is a significant difference between auto- and user-initiated video ads, which results in two different user experiences.  An auto-initiated ad plays automatically when a user visits a web page, but the video ad does not block the user from viewing intended content.  User-initiated ads must be viewed by consumers before reaching their desired content, such as a video or game.  Because higher levels of consumer engagement are associated with user-initiated video ads, advertisers are willing to pay a premium for them.
Historically, however, user- and auto-initiated placements have been bundled together in brokered deals by ad networks and sold at a flat CPM.   With SpotXchange providing partners with initiation type information in real time with each bid request, SpotXchange’s RTB and direct buy partners can value each placement opportunity independently. This transparency coupled with robust audience data, leads to higher ROI for advertisers and increased yield for publishers, by providing high-quality inventory to the exchange.
Read more: SpotXchange

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” is an old management adage. However, by the same token, just because you can measure something, does not mean you should manage by it.
I authored a previous iMedia article about why clicks are the wrong metric. In that article, I alluded to the view-through effectiveness of display advertising despite the absence of clicks. In the spirit of that conversation, I want to discuss the relevance of other metrics in determining campaign success
Use: Brand measures like lift in awareness or consideration You can’t click on a billboard, radio, or TV ad but we know they impact awareness, consideration, even purchase intent. Of course, the same is true of online ads. If the campaign has a branding objective, then optimize to it, ideally with a real-time data-driven approach.
Brand marketers want solutions that demonstrate improvement over time, transfer learnings across campaigns from top of the funnel to mid-funnel, and finally, result in sales. Everyone loves search for converting in-market folks but don’t always remember to widen the funnel. As a marketer, if you rely on offline media (namely, TV) to be your lone awareness vehicle, then you’re subject to over-saturation in television and missing out on cross-media optimized exposure. Complement offline with a digital awareness initiative.
Read more: iMEDIACONNECTION
Twelvefold Extends ‘Spectrum’ Ads To Mobile
Twelvefold Media (formerly BuzzLogic) has brought its Spectrum ad platform, which targets display ads at the page level based on topic, audience and social activity, to the mobile realm.

The company says its Spectrum for Mobile solution will allow more precise targeting on smartphones and tablets than what is typically available today. It notes that traditional mobile ad solutions target audience based on categories or targeted to keywords. Spectrum for Mobile matches ads to more specific content, such as “easy-to-make, healthy snacks for kids that contain whole wheat and are loved by moms.”
Read more MediaPost

Calculating ROI in social media is a hot topic. As companies have rushed into the elusive social media marketing gold mine, many are left trying to figure out if all the time and effort is paying off.
The problem is that social media is extremely difficult to measure. In a former life, I worked as a financial analyst at P&G, and a big part of my job was to measure the ROI of our different marketing efforts. In calculating the return on traditional media, we often found that we couldn’t exactly calculate everything, so we resorted to some creative approaches.

There are many challenges to measuring the return from social media, most notably:

•Volume of social media activity isn’t always related to social media efforts. A provocative television spot or a new product launch can generate social media mentions that aren’t related to your specific social media efforts.

•The value of social media is more than just marketing and can involve product research, customer service, public relations, and consumer research. All of these benefits can’t easily be tied back to a sales number.

•Even what we can count isn’t always accurate. When measuring online, we often look at the last click that led someone to our website, and brands will look at traffic and possibly sales generated from social media sites. The problem is that we know in marketing that it takes up to seven touch points to build a brand impression, and only attributing the last click minimizes the role that other marketing tools played.

•Traditional metrics of reach don’t work well because the quality of impressions on social media sites can be very different. We measure traditional media based on reach or how many people are exposed to the message, but in social media, the message can range from positive to negative and from passive to highly involved, making it difficult to determine the value of each impression.

These are only a few of the challenges that you may face as a part of your social media marketing measurement. Creative Ways to Measure (or at Least Validate) Your Social Media Efforts Measuring ROI isn’t always an exact science (unless you have a large measurement budget based on complex modeling), but there are some approaches to measurement that can at least validate your efforts.
Read more: ClickZ
Microsoft Adding Social To Brand Display Ads For Guaranteed And Non-Guaranteed Inventory Says GM Creegan
As part of Social Media Week festivities in NYC, Microsoft Advertising announced what it’s calling “People Powered Stories.” Formally launching next month, the offering will begin by incorporating social commerce tech from Bazaarvoice and is the first step in Microsoft’s social display strategy.

Microsoft Advertising GM of Display Advertising Experiences, Jennifer Creegan said on the Microsoft Ad blog, “We believe it will give marketers the ability to create ads that tell powerful stories and create brand relevancy beyond just a ‘Like’ by adding the authenticity and believability of real people’s real stories.” Read more – and see examples.

Creegan and Brant Barton, GM, Media Solutions for Bazaarvoice, discussed the announcement and its implications with AdExchanger.

AdExchanger: Can you talk about the significance of today’s announcement for Microsoft?
Jennifer Creegan: I would bucket it down into a couple of simple points. We are passionate about how we’re bringing social advertising to the entire marketing campaign. As we did research across both the consumer landscape and the marketer landscape, it became clear that there was a crossover need around word‑of‑mouth marketing, and specifically, ratings and reviews.

For us, the significance of this announcement is that we’re taking what we have been good at for a long time, which is interesting brand canvases across the digital ecosystem, and marrying that with our ratings and reviews content so that the marketer can have their story, and their consumer stories, tell a still more complete story, if you will, to potential customers. Bazaarvoice is our first partner in the People Powered Stories social framework.
Read more: AdExchanger